Dr. Mary L. Poss

Dr. Mary L. Poss serves as Professor of Biology and Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University, where she is a key member of both the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and the Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics. Her research focuses on understanding viral adaptation to changing host environments, spanning from cellular to population scales. Her work encompasses four major areas: using viruses as markers to study host population dynamics for conservation and infection ecology, investigating emerging virus infections and their adaptation to new host species, studying virus-innate immunity interactions in respiratory and lentivirus infections, and examining pathogen interactions in cases of multiple infections. As an instructor for the Coursera course "Epidemics - the Dynamics of Infectious Diseases," she shares her expertise in viral evolution and host-pathogen relationships with a global audience. Her innovative approach combines experimental systems with computational methods to understand how viruses respond to new host environments, contributing significantly to our understanding of emerging diseases and viral adaptation mechanisms.